One of the hardest steps to take on the path to becoming an entrepreneur is stepping out of your comfort zone. As humans, we love comfort. We love the feeling of being safe at home and we love familiarity. However, it’s the successful entrepreneurs that thrive in unfamiliar environments. They know how to take risks, they understand when to gamble and they always have a plan B ready for when plan A fails.

This article could go on and on about what entrepreneurs do that you currently don’t. But, instead, we’ve distilled it down to just a couple of considerations that you should make if you want to upgrade your home business into a proper startup.

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Have a growth plan

Perhaps it’s never been on your mind before, but you need to have a growth plan ready for your business. This article from telegraph.co.uk will show you how to create a strategy for your business. It’s one of the fundamentals of running a business, and if you plan to step out of your comfort zone and upgrade your at-home business to a large-scale operation, then you have to be ready to accept change.

Secure the funds

Whether it’s through crowdfunding platforms or a business loan through a website such as smallbusinessloans.co, you need to have money in order to grow your business. Sure, there are plenty of ways to grow a business that don’t involve the use of money, but if you want to hire employees, rent an office and employ proper marketing techniques and materials, then you need to spend money. Just remember the saying; you can’t make money without investing money.

Have a continuity plan

Let’s admit it; growth plans don’t always work out. You could end up bankrupt because you lack the experience or you could grow so quickly that you crumble under the pressure and your business collapses. It’s difficult to expand a business, so always have an exit strategy. For instance, you could dissolve the business and continue your at-home business, or you could scale down your operations and fire all of the staff that you hired. Whatever you do, make sure you have some kind of plan ready for the possibility of your company shutting down.

Understand your responsibilities

As a business owner and entrepreneur, you need to understand that you’re no longer in charge of just a handful of staff or yourself. As an entrepreneur, you’ll have hundreds if not thousands of employees working under you at some point, so it’s your responsibility as the business owner to care about every single one to some degree. Your decisions will echo throughout the entire company, so make sure you’re prepared to have the fate of every member of staff in your hands. Whether they have a job to feed their families next week or not is entirely down to your decisions, so make every decision count and remember that you have more responsibilities the larger your company becomes. Some people can’t cope with this and ultimately pass the business on to someone else while they remain the founder. However, the successful leaders can inspire everyone that works for them, and it’s that kind of attitude that you should be aiming for.